Review: He Said/She Said by Erin Kelly

Published: 20 April 2017, Hodder & Stoughton

Pages: 416

Synopsis: “Who do you believe?

In the hushed aftermath of a total eclipse, Laura witnesses a brutal attack.

She and her boyfriend Kit call the police, and in that moment, it is not only the victim's life that is changed forever.

Fifteen years on, Laura and Kit live in fear.

And while Laura knows she was right to speak out, the events that follow have taught her that you can never see the whole picture: something - and someone - is always in the dark...”

Rating: *

Plot and writing wise, I felt He Said/She Said was very vague and wishy-washy. I didn’t think that plot point and backstory were explained very well, I understand the tool of holding information back to achieve suspense and keep the audience interested but this was a bit too vague and held back for me to be intrigued by.

Personally, I felt the best part of the book were the courtroom scenes. These felt a lot more authentic than the rest of the plot and I would definitely read more by Erin Kelly if she focused on these and wrote courtroom based novels. The rest of the plot didn’t really fit for me, especially the eclipse chasing aspect. Yes it enabled some aspects of the plot to fit together, but overall it just felt like unnecessary padding and unneeded extra detail.

I read through Netgalley and there were major layout/editing issues with this copy. There were a few times when Erin Kelly was written in italics in the middle of the page (breaking up the writing) almost like a footer but way too far up the page. Some words had spaces in the middle such as “imagin ation” and “yo u’ve”, the latter being incredibly common, almost on every page. There were also random paragraph breaks, sometimes in the middle of a sentence.